


Oh, you won’t mind my drinking it, then

by Storycat9



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Humor, Episode: s04e03 O Ye of Little Faith Father, F/M, Kinley Is All the B.S., Little Glass Vial in Chloe's Purse, POV Lucifer, Post-Devil Face Reveal to Chloe Decker, Wait It's Not What You Think
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-12
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:27:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27532246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Storycat9/pseuds/Storycat9
Summary: Yes, yes, Dr. Linda thinks Lucifer's self-sabotaging, but it's not paranoia if his newly-returned partner really is lying and scheming to send him back to Hell, right? All he has to do is get the Detective's purse, find the little glass vial Father Kinley has warned him about, and confront her about her ghastly betrayal.After all, it's not like he could be misjudging the situation.
Relationships: Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar
Comments: 30
Kudos: 178





	Oh, you won’t mind my drinking it, then

**Author's Note:**

> S4 canon AU. See note at end.

Lucifer had wanted to fly Chloe to San Francisco to see _La Traviata_. Or even just cook her a romantic dinner in his penthouse. And she … reschedules their date for a bloody soup kitchen?

No. Enough of this.

He throws his hands up, incensed that this, this traitorous _muppet_ thinks a community service date would be fun. Like he’s out on bloody _parole_. The irony is thick enough to choke on.

“Lucifer, I just thought it would be nice to do something good for a change,” Chloe tries to smile at him, but he’s having none of it.

“Oh, ‘for a change.’ And just what is it that you'd like me to change?” he hisses. Father Kinley’s warnings seethe through his head. Does the Detective actually hate him? Is she plotting to send him back to Hell? This grim little alley certainly reminds him of some hell loops.

Chloe blows out a sigh. “Oh, Lucifer, that’s not what I meant. Look, ok, if you’d like to leave, we can leave.”

He grabs her arm and hauls her away from the volunteer sign-up station to a quieter spot. “You have been acting very strange, Detective," he growls. "Wanting me to drink less, be nicer to suspects, be more philanthropic …”

“Oh, Lucifer, that’s not true,” she says. Her phone buzzes, flashing the Douche’s ID, and she snaps it off.

“The only thing I know to be true is that you’ve been lying to me.” 

Whatever else Kinley said, he knew about Chloe and Lucifer. Chloe must have told the priest, and lied when she said she’d not told anyone about his unfortunate Devil-face reveal. 

Irritation flashes over her tired, lovely features. “No, I haven’t.”

“Show me your purse,” he snaps.

“My purse? Why?”

“Show it to me.”

“Oh-kay, fine,” she says doubtfully, giving over her handbag.

He rakes through the pockets and zips until, with a look of bitter triumph, he pulls out a small glass bottle.

“Detective, what’s this?”

He sees a flush rise insidiously across her throat. “Nothing.”

“Oh, right, well, if it’s nothing you won’t mind my drinking it, then.”

She boggles at him. “ _No_ , don’t drink it, it’s perfume.”

He chuckles darkly. “Oh, I’ve had worse.”

He eyes her as he raises the vial to toss it back, noting her hand rising in spite of herself to stop him …

* * *

… and Lucifer registers the flabbergasted expression on the Detective’s face around the same moment his nose is buffeted by amber and white wood ... cinnamon and mint notes ... a dash of orange ... hints of dozens of different spices in scents too delicate and complex for most mortals to comprehend. A unique and very private formula from a very grateful Paco Rabanne after an epic launch party for the fashion designer in Madrid. 

It’s _his_. 

Lucifer’s just nearly drunk an eighth-ounce or so of his own obscenely expensive cologne in a fit of paranoid rage.

There’s nothing else in the Detective's handbag but wallet, gun, phone, a powder compact and the mom essentials of Band-Aids and wet wipes. No other vial. No folded up plan with instructions for arcane rituals to send him to the fiery pit for eternity. 

All of this breaks across his face in waves and comes out as a choked, “Wha?”

The Detective’s face, now beet red, crumples into a mortified grimace. She hugs herself and mutters, “Look, I know it was wrong. You don’t have to freaking _drink_ it to make a point, Lucifer.”

Irritated, befuddled, and yet with something strangely like relief unfolding in his belly, Lucifer takes a deep breath. “Detective, why do you have a vial of my cologne in your purse?”

She grits her teeth. “It’s a travel sprayer. You know, to take some of my perfume along for a date or a work trip or something? But back on my birthday, I was using your bathroom and smelled your cologne … and I stole some, ok? I just sprayed a bunch into my travel vial and took it.”

Her birthday. When she and Linda and Dan had broken into his penthouse and he’d found her passed out asleep in nothing but his button-down shirt. He still hasn’t laundered the damned thing, haunted as it is by lime and rum and the scent of her skin.

Lucifer’s mind works furiously, but the gears keep slipping. “You stole my cologne. Months ago. But … I’m sure I would have smelled it on you.”

A lost little smile plays over her mouth, and she shakes her head slowly. “I didn’t wear it, I just wanted to smell it sometimes. … I tried to get you a travel-size replacement, but I couldn’t find anything like it, even in Europe. I guess it’s pretty far out of my price range.”

His cologne. Chloe had kept his cologne in her purse because she wanted to smell it sometimes. She'd had it while they were fighting, he realizes. While she was with Cain. While she was in Europe and he was terrified she thought he was a monster. He allows himself the vivid, shattering fantasy of his Detective turning her head on a hotel pillow in Rome that smells ever so slightly of him and smiling in her sleep. Maybe, maybe even waking up to his scent and deciding to come home.

Lucifer closes his eyes and inhales it again. Bugger me.

“Priceless, actually,” he replies. “One of a kind.”

She chews her lower lip. “Well, anyway, I’m sorry. Please take it back.” 

Then she takes a deep breath, and sits down on a bench. 

* * *

He sits gingerly next to her, silently apologizing to his dry cleaner. 

“Look, you're right, this was a bad idea for a date,” Chloe says. “You already are a good person; you don’t need to change. And I _have_ been trying to make you act differently lately to convince Dan and … other people ... to see what I see.”

Fury trembles under his skin again, but he touches the back of her hand, hoping to stay calm. “What other people, Detective?”

She takes a halting breath. “You asked me where I went for a month. I took Trixie all over--Paris, Vienna, Copenhagen, Rome. We went to museums and parks and did the tourist stuff, but I also went to universities and libraries, and church and mosque and synagogue reading rooms.”

He freezes, lungs so cold he can’t pull in a breath, but she nudges his shoulder with hers and goes on, “Bars and music clubs, too. I said I was a post-doc doing my dissertation on ‘the devil in history and popular culture.’ I probably could really write it, at this point.”

“So you did tell people about me,” he manages softly.

She looks at him, her gaze blueblueblue like arctic water closing over his head. 

“I didn’t need to tell them about you, personally. I didn’t even give my real name. You wanna know how many college students write their dissertations about the Devil? A lot. Like, _a lot_ a lot. Not just theology: philosophy, psychology, literature, ethnomusicology. Even some weird thing on astrophysics that I couldn't follow even if I'd taken a bunch more math back in school. I’d worry you’d get a big head about it, but most of the books aren’t very good.”

He huffs a short laugh in spite of himself. “If you’d wanted a primary source, Detective, you could have had an exclusive at any time.”

She rolls her eyes, but looks pained, too. “I was _processing_ , Lucifer. I thought I knew Lucifer Morningstar, my partner and best friend. I didn’t believe the Devil was even possible, much less know anything about what the Devil is supposed to be. And reading, talking to all kinds of different people about what the Devil might be--it really did help. Or, it did until I went to Rome.”

Her fingers wring each other white as she speaks. “A priest named Father Kinley came up to me in the Vatican library. He said he knew I worked with a Lucifer Morningstar in Los Angeles who the Church had been watching for seven years. He said they believe you really were … well, you.”

Lucifer watches her gaze go distant, fear flickering over her features, and his stomach clenches as her words start tumbling over themselves with anxiety. 

“Lucifer, he knew my name, my real name. He was going on and on about the two of us unleashing evil on the earth. He thought you were Satan and I was, like, born to be the bride of the Devil or something. I told him you were my partner--God, we never even were _dating--_ and that you helped me _put away_ bad guys ... but he had all these stacks of files, I mean, half of them were in _Latin_ or I don’t even know what language … When I finally got out, I went straight back to the hotel, grabbed Trixie and got on the next flight home. We’d been planning to go to Barcelona, but I just didn’t feel safe going on.”

He sits up a little, touches his jacket but doesn’t take out his flask. He wants to believe her; he can acknowledge she didn’t technically lie to him, and if she shaved the truth thinly, well, she learned from a master. 

But.

“So that’s why you’ve seemed … off? Since you came back?” he presses.

She swallows. 

“No. Kinley followed me to L.A. He keeps trying to contact me. He tried to talk to me outside Trixie’s _school_ , Lucifer, to yell at me about this prophecy again. I just can’t handle any more right now. And yes, I’ve been snapping at you and I’m sorry. I just want us to _lie low_ and try to do things outside our normal routine. I want anybody who’s looking to see that you are not whatever they think you are.” 

“Why didn’t you just _tell me_?” he bursts out, furious at the thought that Kinley has been playing him for days. 

Her voice flattens, drops to something helpless and awful that the Detective should never sound like. 

“Because I’m _terrified_ , Lucifer. I don’t know what’s going on or how many people he has. Right after Marcus and his whole network … and with your … God, I don’t even understand what’s real anymore in all this celestial bullshit. Are prophecies a thing now? I mean, Kinley sounds scary-crazy to me, but should I actually start checking stuff in 600-year-old _scrolls_ before we go out to dinner?” She laughs wetly, and he realizes tears track steadily down her cheeks. “I mean, that kind of makes sense, we’ve never had a single date go right; maybe somebody’s trying to tell us something?”

And here, at last, the bottom falls out. He hears Dr. Linda’s voice in his head, asking if he _wants_ Chloe to reject him. He’d scoffed, but here it is, isn’t it? It’s easier, literally easier to think about the Detective plotting to poison him and conduct an elaborate ritual--in Latin, no less--to send him to Hell, than to think she’s been trying all this time, but struggling with everything, and that she’s come home still struggling and still trying. The certainty of Chloe being some plot or prophecy of his Father’s makes more sense than this dogged human dance of confusion and hope, both in turn hurting each other, waiting for each other, reaching out to try one more time.

Lucifer picks up her hand in his. She doesn’t flinch away, at least. 

“Never mind that wanker, Detective,” he says quietly. “We’ll get him sorted. And if there really is a prophecy, we’ll get that sorted, too. You shouldn’t ever have to be afraid of any of this celestial bullshit, as you put it.”

Lucifer pauses, fights himself, isn’t really sure which part of him has won when he meets her eyes. “I have certain … trust issues, Detective. I admit I can overreact to even small deceptions, little white lies to spare my feelings. I need to know you will be completely honest with me.”

She says nothing, but the corner of her mouth twitches, and one eyebrow rises minutely. Even that tiny expression forces him to hear his own words, and heat spreads on the back of his neck. 

Finally she sighs and chuckles dryly. “I’ll make you a deal, ok? Promise me you’ll be honest with me--not just ‘not lie,’ not just tell the literal truth in a way any sane person wouldn't believe you--and I’ll do the same with you.”

Lucifer’s knee-jerk defense stutters to a stop in his mouth. Would the Detective have needed so much time to “process” if he’d say, shown her his wings as proof when they first came in, rather than letting her find his Devil face standing over her dead ex-fiancé? 

“What if there are questions you ask that I think you don’t want to know the answers to?” he tests.

“Then tell me that,” she shoots back, “and I’ll decide whether I want to ask the question anyway or not. … And I’ll do the same, if you have questions for me.”

Lucifer finally drops his eyes. He knows she would answer any question he asks. And he has a hundred. A thousand. But the most important ones, he’s had for nearly every day he’s known her, absolutely every hour she was gone, and he’s no more sure now than ever that he wants to know the answers. 

And yet … is he not the Devil?

Lucifer gives her the mischievous grin and squeezes her hand in lieu of a shake. “Deal, Detective. And keep the cologne …” He presses his tongue firmly to his cheek, adding, “It can hold my spot on your pillow until I get there myself.”

Chloe colors again, delightfully, and whacks him on the shoulder.

“As for our latest date, this is no topless hot tub party--,” he winks impishly, holding up a hand to forestall another retaliation, “but I am pleased you’re back, and pleased to be with you.”

She softens at that, smiles, tilts her head into his shoulder. “Me too.”

He soaks her warmth into his skin for a moment, then hums. 

“So, for the rest of our date ... can we go literally _anywhere_ else, please?”

Chloe rolls her eyes, but her reply cuts off when her phone buzzes from Daniel again. She answers it, hums, then thanks Detective Douche and hangs up. “How about spending the rest of our date tracking down a new lead on our killer?”

“ _Much_ better,” he says, pulling Chloe to her feet. “Lead the way, Detective.”

**Author's Note:**

> Father Kinley annoys me, ok? He's useful as a villain in the overall S4 arc, but it always felt to me like he muddied the waters in the central post-reveal conflict, which was that Chloe was overwhelmed and ran away in response to his Devil face and was still processing it when she came back. It never really made sense that as good a detective as Chloe is wouldn't have sought more than one obviously biased and frankly sketchy source when trying to get perspective on Lucifer. In the show, Kinley knows who she is and approaches her with the full-court press from the get-go. So in this AU, I just let her have what I considered a more realistic response to his craziness while trying to keep her dodgy behavior when she got home. 
> 
> And I admit, part of me really wanted Lucifer to spitefully drink the vial in her purse on the show, only to spew it out everywhere, realizing he'd actually drunk perfume.


End file.
